Editor's Note The Joint Commission on March 8 announced that it has approved new and revised requirements for hospitals and critical access hospitals certified under the Patient Blood Management Certification program, effective July 1. The requirements have been updated to maintain alignment with the Association for the Advancement of Blood…
Editor's Note This study led by researchers at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System and David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, finds that postoperative mortality was higher in Black men than Black women, White men, and White women. A total of 1,868,036 Black and White Medicare…
Editor's Note This study led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine, New York City, finds no significant improvements over the last decade in postoperative outcomes in women undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery. This retrospective cohort study included 1,297,204 (317,716 were women) patients who had primary CABG surgery between…
Editor's Note The Joint Commission, on February 15, announced that it has finalized the process for an automatic data transfer from the American Heart Association’s (AHA’s) Get with the Guidelines—Coronary Artery Disease registry directly into its Certification Measure Information Process tool for the Comprehensive Heart Attack Center certification program. For…
Editor's Note The Joint Commission, on February 15, announced that its Comprehensive Cardiac Center (CCC) Certification program has been fully revised to: reduce redundancy clarify requirements closely align requirements with other Joint Commission cardiac certification programs. The revised requirements will be effective July 1.
Editor's Note This study led by researchers at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, finds that underrepresentation of minorities persists across all surgical specialties, while representation of females improves. The cross-sectional study examined race, ethnicity and attrition data of 112,205 surgical residents across 18 years (2001-2018) in 10 surgical specialties.…
Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on January 27 posted an addition to the Class I recall by LivaNova (TandemLife) of its LifeSPARC System Controller. The addition to the recall provides information about a software update now available to address the previous software malfunction and recall. The System…
Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on January 25 identified the recall by Datascope/Gettinge of its Cardiosave Hybrid and Rescue Intra-Aortic Balloon Pumps (IABPs) as Class I, the most serious. The recall was initiated because of the risk that blood may enter the pump through a damaged balloon…
Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), on December 20, identified the recall by Arrow International, LLC, subsidiary of Teleflex, Inc, of its Arrow AutoCAT 2 and AC3 intra-aortic balloon pumps (IABPs) as Class I, the most serious. IABPs are used in patients having cardiac and non-cardiac surgery, and…
Editor's Note This Swiss study finds that better OR ventilation properties, as assessed with a new ventilation index, are associated with lower rates of surgical site infections (SSIs) in orthopedic, spine, and cardiac procedures. Researchers calculated a ventilation index with higher values reflecting less turbulent air displacement instead of comparing…